Columns

If Sri Lankan politics looks like a marketplace for second and third-hand goods, should anybody be really surprised?

From the time I could remember local politicians have been moving from one party to another without a by-your-leave. Many years ago it led one Sunday newspaper columnist to suggest sarcastically whether political parties should not install revolving doors at party headquarters to make exits and entrances more convenient.

After all, it could be rather embarrassing if those who are entering run smack into those exiting. That is not all. It would enable those entering to be welcomed with open arms and those exiting to have their briefcases thrown after them.

Nor would it be long before those coming in decide to go out and perhaps even return offering a thousand apologies. Such things have happened. Observers of our still-running political comic opera would know only too well these comings and goings have been happening with greater frequency in the last few weeks as carrots are dangled before them. Given the price of carrots these days it would not be a bad bargain even if there is no gas to cook them.

And then there were the usual jokes that followed political crossovers. One story that did the rounds when I was ‘covering’ politics and parliament for the then respected Ceylon Daily News, concerned the irrepressible Stanley Tillekaratne, lawyer and a member of the Communist Party in the days when the Left movement was in the frontline of domestic politics.

Stanley, as those who knew him called him, was a well-known back-bench heckler. Later he was the Speaker during the days of Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike.

Having crossed over to the SLFP the previous day, Stanley was walking down a corridor at the courts complex in Hulftsdorp when he was stopped in his tracks by a lawyer colleague who commiserated saying “Stanley you must be feeling very tired”. A somewhat surprised Stanley asked him why.

“Why”, said the lawyer, “after your long jump yesterday”, leaving the latest member of Mrs Bandaranaike’s SLFP unusually speechless.

It used to be said of some who crossed and double-crossed and continued to perform such political acrobatics that when they woke up in the morning they did not know which side they were on — not of the bed but of the political mess.

Many are the stories — mainly jokes — about politicians and their somersaults that would amaze even professional gymnasts, but restricted space prevents their telling here.

Moreover, today’s politics is no joke. If ever one hears any mention of politics and politicians in the kilometres-long gas ‘polima’ or kerosene ‘polima’ they are myriad curses directed at those who rule (more accurately misrule) the country, accompanied by increasingly unprintable expletives with the passing hours, as I hear on videos and audio recordings that reach me.

With each passing day, local politics gets much more chaotic and intense as the queues to jump the latest bandwagon get longer than those for cooking gas. That is because the stakes are higher and the need to make a few dollars more to bury in some secret account in an offshore tax haven, be it Dubai, Seychelles, Singapore or San Marino, before the law (not ours, obviously) catches up is now imperative.

One does not have to dip into the Panama Papers or the Pandora Papers for those juicy stories of financial fleecing. Nor does one have to explore the clairvoyant powers of Gnana Akka — that is if one manages to breach the defensive perimeter set up by the local Dad’s Army that supposedly protects her from unwelcome clients and inquisitive journalists.

(By the way, where is that report on the Nirupama Rajapaksa-Thiru Nadesan investigation, President Rajapaksa ordered several months ago following the Pandora Papers expose? It was to be submitted in one month but appears to have gone the way of all flesh and other inquiries)

Earlier this month President Gotabaya, who protesters say should go home to save them from further suffering, has stayed behind possibly to tell an incensed country that a “unity government” was on the cards. That seemed like an utterly wild card, for there does not appear to be much unity (of thought at least) in the clan, to judge by brother Chamal’s speech in Parliament and what brother Basil is said to be planning to do with the 21st amendment — that is if you believe in the political grapevine.

But as Alice said in Wonderland things are getting curiouser and curiouser. You get up one morning to hear that Ranil Wickremesinghe is prime minister. Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, entangled in his Hamletian doubts, had overstayed his invitation.

Whether Gotabaya Rajapaksa with his back to the wall — literally and metaphorically — turned to Ranil Wickremesinghe in sheer desperation to save the Rajapaksa’s from mounting nationwide battering or cynicism to gain time until the GotaGoHome protesters went home themselves, it is difficult to discern.

But it is funny in a way that Wickremesinghe who led the UNP to a political debacle at the August 2020 general election, losing every single seat the party contested including his own and entered parliament through the backdoor, so to say, should reappear as prime minister for the sixth time.

Such a resurrection must surely win encomiums even from Lazarus who managed the feat only once. But this is for real, the party would say, and in our lifetime too. What is more, Wickremesinghe has put his neck on the block at a highly testing time for Sri Lanka and needs the best team behind him — both in the cabinet and the bureaucracy.

Each time the President shuffles the pack to change his ministerial cards the same jokers keep turning up. And what a sorry lot they were and still are. If they helped ruin the country then, either by incompetence or studied silence what makes them any better now, people must surely ask.

The answer my friend, as the song goes, is blowing in the wind of political deal-making. Wickremesinghe cannot survive without a parliamentary majority which Gotabaya undertakes to provide through the SLPP, unless Basil does the dirty when it comes to the 21st amendment.

So Ranil needs more parliamentary support behind him for moral and voting strength. Therefore the hunt for crossovers from parties that have refused to join in what they consider a charade or from those who have vowed to be independent but not independent of inducements such as places in the cabinet.

But if MPs from outside the fold are ready to join and prop up this whatever-it-is-called government and even discard their so-called principles and values, it is not because a place in the cabinet seems attractive in the family album but because they are making a sacrifice on behalf of the nation. So long live the nation!

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)